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KDE, Qt & LightDM: Progress Made

06-02-2011, 07:10 AM

Phoronix: KDE, Qt & LightDM: Progress Made

LightDM, the cross-desktop display manager that provides a clean API for writing multiple user-interfaces and for delivering fast performance, continues to mature. With the Ubuntu 11.10 release in October, Ubuntu is using LightDM instead of the GDM from GNOME as the display / log-in manager. For those concerned that the KDE side may be not getting enough love, it actually is and there's been progress made on a Qt-powered interface...

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IMO, too much fuss about something that you only get to see for 3 seconds

You're probably not a developer. Clean, concise and reusable code is like the holy grail of programming. But there will always be somebody to take that clean, concise and reusable code and stuff it into something else...

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It should be; KDE (or the people behind it) seem to support LightDM more than Gnome (...) is, at least. As far as a practical replacement, we'll see. Some contest that it'll end up as (or more) bloated than GDM and with fewer or (best case, ITO) the same features. However, if it's done right, it should have almost (or) the same features as KDM or GDM, integration with whichever desktop you want (or be as light as you want), and be the one DM to rule them all.

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It should be; KDE (or the people behind it) seem to support LightDM more than Gnome (...) is, at least.

So far only Kubuntu people seem interested in it.
In the end, I believe, what actually matters which DM prevails in the end (from a KDE POV) is which one will successfully implement a Plasma2 (QML) front-end first.
So far neither has a working one (both have early prototypes).

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It should be; KDE (or the people behind it) seem to support LightDM more than Gnome (...) is, at least. As far as a practical replacement, we'll see. Some contest that it'll end up as (or more) bloated than GDM and with fewer or (best case, ITO) the same features. However, if it's done right, it should have almost (or) the same features as KDM or GDM, integration with whichever desktop you want (or be as light as you want), and be the one DM to rule them all.

So a good idea is to have users test it and provide feedback on it. All a DM needs is to handle the desktop logins and should be themable and tweakable to make it as light or as heavy as you want

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It is the distro's responsibility to maintain a consistent theme among all these and both Fedora and Ubuntu seem to do well in this regard. Also, you only get a grub menu if you are dual-booting so it's unfair to compare it to Windows. Provided your video drivers are well-integrated you will see little variation in theme: BIOS screen, purple screen for a few seconds, then the Ubuntu bootup throb fades in, then login screen fades in (for Ubuntu). If anything needs going away its those ugly BIOS screens.